San Diego’s slumping ship repair industry will get flooded with contracts if Congress passes a new defense budget soon, says the head of the Navy’s Southwest Regional Maintenance Center, which hands out the money.

“There’s only six months left in the fiscal year, and a lot of the new work would come to San Diego, where the fleet is growing,” said Jim Achenbach, the center’s executive director.

“This could turn out to be very busy year.”

The maintenance center does some ship repair. But it mostly contracts with local companies to do such work, and it is preparing for an upturn. Achenbach said the number of civilian employees at the Navy center will increase by 130, to 900, over the next 18 months.

A rebound in ship repair depends on the outcome of budget talks. Congress is trying to pass a federal budget this week to avoid a government shutdown. The budget is expected to include more than $500 billion in defense spending.

The negotiations in Washington are being closely monitored by San Diego’s ship repair and ship building industry, which employs 10,000 people.

The shipyards pulled in $775 million last year to fix and upgrade many of the 57 Navy ships stationed locally. The figure had been expected to hit $800 million this year because the Navy is adding vessels in San Diego so that it is better positioned to deal with demands in the Pacific.

But Congress has yet to pass a defense budget for fiscal 2011, delaying a lot of repair work and postponing construction of the Mobile Landing Platform, a new type of ship. Achenbach says the Navy center is now on a pace to process ‘‘a minimum’’ of $618 million in contracts during the current fiscal year. He said the figure would shoot past $700 million if the budget impasse ends.

The impasse has been especially hard on General Dynamics NASSCO, which recently issued layoff notices to 350 workers. The Navy postponed $24.7 million in repairs and upgrades NASSCO was set to do on the amphibious assault ship Peleliu. And NASSCO has yet to get a contract to build the MLP, which it is designing.

Rear Adm. David Gale, who oversees all of the Navy’s regional maintenance centers, said Wednesday through a spokesman that, “The ship repairs have to be done, they have to be maintained, taxpayers need to get value for their money.”

San Diego is a center for such work. And the local Navy fleet is expected to grow from 57 to 72 ships over the next five years or so, largely due the addition of new littoral combat ships.

The Navy is proceeding with plans to place two frigates in dry dock at NASSCO on April 29.

The impasse over the budget could mean that work on the ships won’t begin right away.

But Achenbach said, “The money eventually will come in for work on these ships, and we’ll make sure it is awarded. We need to maintain our industrial base, and San Diego is a Navy town. We need to have these ships ready to respond when they’re needed.”